Thursday, 31 January 2013

Lost friendship | Healthy Relationship

-Someday everything will make perfect sense- Hope you guys enjoyed our video on friendship :) -TAN- ??????LINK S??????? ? TWITTE R- twitter.com ============================ -FACEBOO K- www.facebook.com =========================== -TUMBL R- tanalwaysandforever.tumblr.com =========================== -DAILYBOOT H- dailybooth.com =========================== -EMAI L- tan11418@hotmail.com #28 ? Most Discussed (Today) ? Film & Animation ? Australia #8 ? Top Favorited (Today) ? Film & Animation ? Australia #21 ? Top Rated (Today) ? Film & Animation ? Australia #82 ? Top Rated (This Week) ? Film & Animation ? Australia

Written by Admin Posted in Teenage Relationships

Source: http://www.jcinunitedway.org/311-lost-friendship

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Ask the Experts: Can Aging Be Controlled?

Judith Campisi, aging Judith Campisi began her career studying cancer, but now investigates the molecular causes of aging Image: Berkeley Lab

Scientists have long thought that aging could be caused by molecular damage that accumulates in our bodies over the course of time. The damage is an unavoidable by-product of breathing oxygen and other metabolic processes that are necessary to life. Eventually, damaged cells stop working, or worse, adopt new functions that trigger cancerous growth or degrade important tissues in the brain, skin and other organs.

But as Melinda Wenner Moyer reports in the February issue of Scientific American, investigators have conducted several experiments over the past few years that challenge this so-called oxidative stress theory of aging. For example, a tiny mouselike creature known as the naked mole rat manages to live up to 30 years (about 10 times longer than a similarly sized mouse) despite accumulating a much greater level of oxidative damage in its tissues than other rodents.

These and other often surprising results have led to a boom in research on aging in the past few years, as investigators learn more about the inner workings of the cells at the molecular and genetic levels.

Scientific American spoke to Judith Campisi, a professor at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging and senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, for a quick overview of the field. You can read more about Campisi?s research on cell senescence as one possible cause of aging in the August 2012 issue of Scientific American.

[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]

Why is it so hard to figure out what causes aging?
In many ways we already know what causes aging. We just don't know what causes aging in the kind of molecular detail that would allow us to intervene in large meaningful ways. It's not even clear that once we solve those mysteries we will be able to intervene in aging or dramatically extend longevity.

I started my career studying cancer. Look at all the things we have learned since the 1970s about how cancers form in the body. And yet, still the best cures we have for most cancers are sledgehammers. Biology is complex?and this is a reality that the public has to come to grips with and our legislators have to come to grips with.

I predict aging will follow the same trajectory as cancer research. Why is aging so difficult to figure out? It's because it's a really tough problem. I think it's tougher than cancer. The time has come to really wallow in the complexities.

How many different causes of aging do you think there will turn out to be?
I don't think there will be hundreds of causes of aging. But I don't think there will be just one, either, or we would have gotten a handle on it by now. It's sort of like asking me what the stock market would be tomorrow. I could give you an answer but you'd be crazy to believe me!

How about just a couple causes of aging?
Well, we know that there is molecular damage and what I will refer to as genetic damage?although that doesn't necessarily mean a mutation. By genetic damage, I am referring to both changes in the genes themselves as well as in the epigenetic switches that regulate how the genes are expressed.

Why does this damage occur? Basically, there are two main reasons: One, breathing oxygen is dangerous to your health. Your body makes certain harmful compounds just as a result of breathing oxygen. Two, the cells inside your body make mistakes when they divide. Most of the cells in your body are not dividing at any given time. Many have the ability to divide but? don't. But when a cell does divide, it has to copy three billion base pairs of DNA exactly right. Inevitably mistakes happen and cells become damaged.

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=d3730db928c72914976f0bfbd189b37c

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Wednesday, 30 January 2013

Guantanamo defense lawyers want prison camp sleep-over

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - Lawyers defending the Guantanamo prisoners accused of plotting the September 11 attacks sought permission on Tuesday to spend 48 hours in the top-secret prison where the alleged al Qaeda conspirators have awaited trial for more than six years.

"You want to sleep with your client?" Army tribunal judge Colonel James Pohl asked one of the lawyers during a hearing, provoking snickers in the courtroom at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base in Cuba.

Pohl said he had not intended to be flippant but was trying to pin down whether the military and civilian defense lawyers were asking to sleep on cots in their clients' cells. The five defendants, who skipped their pretrial hearing on Tuesday, are accused of training and aiding the hijackers who are accused of killing 2,976 people in the United States in 2001.

They are housed in "Camp 7," a maximum-security detention facility reserved for captives previously held in secret CIA prisons overseas. They are segregated from the general prisoner population in the facility, whose very existence was not publicly acknowledged until more than a year after their transfer to Guantanamo in 2006.

Navy Commander Walter Ruiz, a defense attorney for alleged al Qaeda money courier Mustafa al Hawsawi, said a two-day visit was needed to get an intimate understanding of the conditions of confinement.

Defense lawyers said harsh conditions could constitute illegal pretrial punishment, a potentially mitigating factor that could spare the defendants from the death penalty if they are convicted of war crimes that include terrorism, hijacking and attacking civilians. The lawyers want a 48-hour visit, plus follow-up visits every six months.

Prosecutors did not object to letting the defense into Camp 7 but said a two-day visit would be unduly disruptive. They proposed instead that the defense lawyers be allowed a one-time visit, during which they would not be allowed to speak to anyone except the personnel conducting the two-hour tour.

OFFER RIDICULED

The offer was ridiculed by Navy Commander Kevin Bogucki, who represents Ramzi Binalshibh, a Yemeni defendant accused of helping the hijackers enroll in flight training schools.

"It calls to mind the jungle cruise at Disneyland," Bogucki said, referring to the theme park ride where visitors are loaded onto boats that glide past elephants that are in fact mechanical imitations programmed to spout water on cue.

The judge did not immediately rule on the issue. But he did shed a glimmer of light as to who cut the audio-visual feed that provides limited public access to the hearings during Monday's session.

During all hearings involving former CIA captives, spectators watch the proceedings from behind a soundproof glass wall at the rear of the courtroom. They hear the sound on a 40-second delay, through a feed that also provides sound and video to journalists in the Guantanamo press center and to a couple of closed-circuit viewing sites on the U.S. East Coast.

A court security officer seated near the judge controls a button that muffles the feed with static when secret information is disclosed.

But it was someone outside the courtroom who killed the sound for a couple of minutes when David Nevin, a lawyer for the alleged mastermind of the hijacked plane plot, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, asked if the lawyers and judges should meet in closed session before considering a defense request to preserve the secret CIA prisons where the defendants were formerly held.

The judge was angry that someone had censored the hearing without his permission and defense lawyers said they were shocked to learn someone outside the courtroom was listening in, with a finger on the kill switch.

Pohl said there had been no valid basis for the interruption because Nevin was merely reading the title of a publicly released court motion. He told the lawyers that an agency he did not identify was monitoring the closed-circuit feed to make sure secrets were not disclosed.

The request to preserve the CIA prisons will not be heard until a February court session because the judge and lawyers are still debating whether the defendants can be present for a discussion of those facilities where they were formerly held.

(Editing by Tom Brown and Christopher Wilson)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/guantanamo-defense-lawyers-want-prison-camp-sleep-over-005724539.html

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Sex offenders are on the move

Sex offenders are on the move [ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 29-Jan-2013
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Joan Robinson
joan.robinson@springer.com
49-622-148-78130
Springer

Geospatial technologies help track real-time movements of sex offenders

Convicted sex offenders continue to move freely within communities, including in restricted areas, despite laws designed to limit their movements. A new study, by Alan Murray from Arizona State University and colleagues, uses new tracking techniques to better understand the actual movements of sex offenders. This information can help develop effective strategies to promote public safety. The findings are published in a new book, Crime Modeling and Mapping Using Geospatial Technologies, published by Springer.

Sexual offenses, especially those committed against children, are of concern to both the public and policy makers. In response to these concerns, local, state and federal legislators in the US have passed a series of laws designed to reduce interaction between children and these potentially dangerous individuals. To date, the vast majority of research on sex offenders and residence restrictions deals with issues of housing availability and affordability. Very little work has focused on sex offender mobility, and residence trends in particular.

Murray and his team analyze sex offender residential movement patterns over a two and a half year period in Hamilton County, Ohio. They used geographic information systems and a developed exploratory system (SOSTAT)* to uncover spatial behavioral patterns, which give important insights into offender reintegration, their mobility within communities and the implications of restrictions on both offenders and the community.

Their analyses showed that sex offenders appear to be a very mobile group. Over the two and a half year period, 65 percent of registered offenders changed residences. Although there was a noticeable trend towards fewer offenders living in restricted zones overall, worryingly, nearly a third moved from non-restricted areas into restricted zones.

The authors conclude: "Over the years, changes in laws governing post-release activities of offenders were designed to monitor and track this group of individuals. Our study highlights that, despite these increasingly stringent laws, sex offenders move freely about communities and continue to reside in restricted residential areas. This mobility suggests that current policies may require modification to achieve their intended goals."

This example of the value of spatial analysis for crime analysis is featured in a new book Crime Modeling and Mapping Using Geospatial Technologies edited by Michael Leitner of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge (USA). The book tackles various types of crime and places them in a geospatial context. As well as posing interesting questions on crime in such a context, the chapters also discuss applications and implementations of geographic information systems.

###

*Key components of SOSTAT include a map-based display, linked graphics, statistical measures and optimization models.

Reference

Murray AT et al (2013). "Convicted sex offender residential movements" from Crime Modeling and Mapping Using Geospatial Technologies; ISBN 978-94-007-4996-2 (Springer, 2013)

The full-text chapter is available to journalists on request.


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] [ | E-mail | Share Share ]

?


AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.


Sex offenders are on the move [ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 29-Jan-2013
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Joan Robinson
joan.robinson@springer.com
49-622-148-78130
Springer

Geospatial technologies help track real-time movements of sex offenders

Convicted sex offenders continue to move freely within communities, including in restricted areas, despite laws designed to limit their movements. A new study, by Alan Murray from Arizona State University and colleagues, uses new tracking techniques to better understand the actual movements of sex offenders. This information can help develop effective strategies to promote public safety. The findings are published in a new book, Crime Modeling and Mapping Using Geospatial Technologies, published by Springer.

Sexual offenses, especially those committed against children, are of concern to both the public and policy makers. In response to these concerns, local, state and federal legislators in the US have passed a series of laws designed to reduce interaction between children and these potentially dangerous individuals. To date, the vast majority of research on sex offenders and residence restrictions deals with issues of housing availability and affordability. Very little work has focused on sex offender mobility, and residence trends in particular.

Murray and his team analyze sex offender residential movement patterns over a two and a half year period in Hamilton County, Ohio. They used geographic information systems and a developed exploratory system (SOSTAT)* to uncover spatial behavioral patterns, which give important insights into offender reintegration, their mobility within communities and the implications of restrictions on both offenders and the community.

Their analyses showed that sex offenders appear to be a very mobile group. Over the two and a half year period, 65 percent of registered offenders changed residences. Although there was a noticeable trend towards fewer offenders living in restricted zones overall, worryingly, nearly a third moved from non-restricted areas into restricted zones.

The authors conclude: "Over the years, changes in laws governing post-release activities of offenders were designed to monitor and track this group of individuals. Our study highlights that, despite these increasingly stringent laws, sex offenders move freely about communities and continue to reside in restricted residential areas. This mobility suggests that current policies may require modification to achieve their intended goals."

This example of the value of spatial analysis for crime analysis is featured in a new book Crime Modeling and Mapping Using Geospatial Technologies edited by Michael Leitner of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge (USA). The book tackles various types of crime and places them in a geospatial context. As well as posing interesting questions on crime in such a context, the chapters also discuss applications and implementations of geographic information systems.

###

*Key components of SOSTAT include a map-based display, linked graphics, statistical measures and optimization models.

Reference

Murray AT et al (2013). "Convicted sex offender residential movements" from Crime Modeling and Mapping Using Geospatial Technologies; ISBN 978-94-007-4996-2 (Springer, 2013)

The full-text chapter is available to journalists on request.


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] [ | E-mail | Share Share ]

?


AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.


Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-01/s-soa012913.php

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Before career change, test drive a new profession

13 hrs.

Some people quit whatever they?re doing to plunge headfirst into a new career.

As glamorous as it sounds to chuck everything for a new passion, it?s not practical. You need money to bankroll going back to school, start a business or make ends meet while working an entry-level job to switch a completely different profession. What if you decide that other industry isn?t for you? Back to square one.?Instead, employment experts suggest taking a career change for a test spin before committing to it 100 percent.

There are different ways to try before you buy. Volunteer or work pro bono to see if something?s the right fit. Work on a startup after hours until you?re earning enough to make it a full-time gig. Get the training and connections you need to start over by going back to school part?time.

?Trying something out first is important before investing in a whole new education,? says Paula Gregorowicz, a Philadelphia career coach who counsels small and women-owned businesses.

Here are the stories of three people who inched their way into a career change:

Back to (fashion) school
In her former job as a business consultant, Yasha Stelzner dressed for success. In the one she?s working toward, she aspires to help the fashion designers who create what she wears.

Stelzner, 38, already had an undergraduate degree and MBA when she went back to school to land a fashion-industry job. It was the quickest way to figure out which aspect of the business to focus on, and to get internships and connections that could lead to a job, Stelzner says. ?Not working in the industry, you?re just isolated from it,? she says. ?You don?t know who to talk to, the resources, it?s really hard. You could probably do it, but this just makes it easier, to embed yourself into the community.?

The San Francisco resident started attending classes at the city?s Academy of Art University in early 2011 while working part time in her old job. After taking a clothing construction course, she realized she could blend her business background and passion for fashion in a job as a product developer. People in those behind-the-scenes positions turn a designer?s sketches into patterns, fabrics and notions for a factory to produce the garments at a desired price.

School led to the industry connections and internships Stelzner hoped for. She?ll finish her masters of fine arts at the end of 2013, but already has picked up a few clients. She anticipates her first job will pay about what she was previously making, with the potential to make even more.

Her advice for going back to school for a career change: ?Don?t worry so much about the grade but what you need to learn, and keep your focus on that.?

A five-year transition
Moonlighting in a new job while working in an old one is one way to ease into a transition, but it can years.

Tony Magee?s journey from salesman to microbrewery owner took five years. Today, the 52-year-old is well-known in beer circles as the owner of Marin County, Calif.-based Lagunitas Brewing Co., which makes tasty brews like Dogtown Pale Ale and Cappuccino Stout. Before that, Magee was a sales rep for a Bay Area commercial printing company, and before that, a musician.

The beer bug bit after Magee got a homebrew kit for Christmas, tried it and was so enthralled, he decided to start a brewery. But even after some early successes, he didn?t quit his day job. ?I would get up at 3 a.m. and by 3:45 I was sitting in front of a Mac at Kinko?s working on labels and pamphlets,? he says. ?I?d go to the brewery until 9 when my printing customers started showing up, and then I?d start that job.?

A long span from one career to another can take a toll. While Magee worked two jobs, the 100-hour work weeks almost ended his marriage. After a few years, his wife joined him at the brewery, which helped. Now she runs the company?s plant, logistics and hiring. ?The life that it represents helped keep us together, and that?s a good thing,? he says.

Two decades after he started, Lagunitas has grown to 200 employees and sells beer in 38 states. Magee is getting ready to open a second brewery in Chicago to expand even more.

To people contemplating a career change, Magee suggests working hard and having faith in yourself that things will be OK. ?Every lesson you learned in life will apply to everything else,? he says.

Doing the homework
You won?t know for sure what a new career is like until you research it.?

Anne Fleming routinely did research and product development as the senior marketing director for a Pittsburgh decorative lighting company, so before deciding to jump to a new career as a small-business owner, she spent two years investigating it.?

Fleming?s experience buying a car got her interested in creating a website where women could share their own stories about purchasing an?auto, reviews that?other women could then?use to become better negotiators. As part of her research, Fleming wrote a marketing plan, got help from the University of Pittsburgh?s small-business development center, hired a marketing firm and in 2008 launched the website, Women-Drivers.com.

She worked on the site in her spare time until 2009, when the lighting company was acquired and laid off 31 of 36 employees, including her. Fleming used her severance, along with money from selling her house, to focus full time on the site.

From 2009 to 2011, Fleming built up the business by doing more research: using data from visitors to the site to write reports on women and cars, which led to more exposure inside the industry.

For the past year, Fleming has again worked two jobs, splitting her days between the website -- which she says is doing well enough to no longer need her 24/7, seven days a week --?and working as the marketing director for a local emergency-alert system franchise.

Besides doing research, those contemplating a career switch should line up a team of supporters, she says. ?Have advisers who aren?t your BFF or your family. They?re objective stakeholders and they?re there for you and will give you feedback whether you like it or not,? she says.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/business/ready-career-change-test-drive-new-profession-1C8145730

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Tuesday, 29 January 2013

Why social media is good for medicine and why pharmaceutical ...

There?s nothing more important than our health, but should we trust the Internet when we seek information on medicines? In advance of a free public Polis seminar on social media and?pharmaceuticals?this Thursday Katherine Relle describes her new research looking at what we can learn from what people say about medicines in online forums.

Social media forums for healthcare contribute to the public knowledge base and offer practical value.

When pharmaceutical companies engage in social media forums to debate health issues, they must balance direct advertising messages toward patients with their unique social responsibilities for advancing medicine and public health.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) acknowledge that these tensions exist for the pharmaceutical industry. In December 2011, the FDA published long-awaited draft guidelines for a social media policy aimed at upholding a necessary degree of risk communication for online advertising by the U.S. pharmaceutical industry.[1]

Social Media Policy

However, the FDA has been slow to issue formal regulations to provide an official social media policy, and a wooly relationship exists between leading pharmaceutical players and the market capture of social media.[2] Benefits of engaging in social media include enhancing reputation, customer service, and sales. Challenges include individual or corporate lawsuits, cyber-security regulations, and, most extremely, public health crises. Therefore, a balance must be struck for the pharmaceutical industry to appropriately harness online information. This is no easy task.

Original Research

My original research on Internet healthcare forums concludes that social media forums are more than mere talking shops. They provide a valuable point of reference for both patient-consumers and companies engaging in social media listening.

A ten-variable content analysis which looked at a total of 600 posts across three randomly selected online health-related forums, at 200 posts per forum, makes it apparent that, with more industry involvement in social media, the negative aspects of risk communication can be mitigated. The positive aspects of personal profiling, education, and sentiment can be strengthened.

The following is a summary of data-related evidence from my research, which allows me to make such conclusions:

First, nearly half (47 percent) of the online posts that were analysed involved risk messages. Online risk messaging threatens company branding because informal social media messages may be inaccurate when not vetted by industry experts. Big pharma needs to engage with social media to protect company brands.

Second, even though patient-consumers were reluctant to provide much personal information (i.e., gender or age), the information that was provided often elicited decipherable traits due to the nature of the posts. Personal information in these posts provided interesting characteristics based on legitimate profiling assumptions, which could help inform relevant marketing practices concerning which issues to convey and what tones to use in product advertising.

Third, a quarter of the analysed posts explicitly sought information, and a majority of the posts engaged in an informative dialogue about oral contraceptives. The educational nature of social media is apparent for the benefit of product development.

Fourth, positive and negative sentiment about a wide range of oral contraceptive brands was varied. Increased engagement in social media listening would allow companies to learn from these praises and dismissals, associating brand names with sentiment analyses to examine best practices within the industry.

Finally, the current lack of regulatory guidance tilts the public sphere toward the consumer, but consumer sovereignty is not necessarily the ideal.[3] When consumers fail to understand the complexity of science behind the development of drugs, the industry?s advertising motives, or the politics involved with industry funding, dangerous assumptions can be made. This negatively affects pharma and creates issues for public health.

Benefits of Engaging?

Big pharma should enter into the public sphere for the benefit of the industry and patient-consumers alike. The benefits of engaging in the online public sphere seem to outweigh the risks, and suggestions for doing so are vast.

For example, if pharmaceutical companies wish to engage with social media, stakeholders could create their own customized policies in a system of self-governance in lieu of widespread FDA regulations, so that individual companies may advance within the industry. In doing so, a pharmaceutical social media ombudsman role might be created in which registered physicians work impartially as appointed officers to police the communication between pharma and the online public sphere of patient-consumers. This would require that impartial and trained physicians be appointed to work within the industry as social media managers who proactively seek to rectify false information about prescription drugs.

Innovation of this sort is crucial if more pharma companies choose to engage with social media forums. Such a system of governance could also establish precedents for co-regulatory practices with the FDA. These steps will define the future of the pharmaceutical industry. Further research conducted via interviews and focus groups will contribute to the conclusions made in this research. For now, we can settle on the idea that the introduction of social media into the corporate world is changing industry governance in unique ways and on a grand scale.

For more:

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/polis/2012/12/20/marketing-medicine-online-social-media-and-pharma/

?Marketing Medicine Online: Social Media and Pharma ? new event Thursday ?Jan 31st?

Thursday 31 January 2013, 6.30-8pm, Wolfson Theatre, New Academic Building at Lincoln?s Inn Fields, LSE

Speakers include Katherine Relle, LSE alum and winner of the Human Digital Prize, Christian Gladwell? from Human Digital, Jamie Bartlett from Demos, and John Gerow from Astra Zeneca.

This event is free and open to all but?please RSVP?to?polis@lse.ac.uk?if you?d like to attend.


[1] Ringler, Jennifer. ?FDA Social Media Guidelines: Irresponsible???PharmExec.?n.p., 1 February 2012. Web. 26 February 2012. <http://www.pharmexec.com/pharmexec/Back+Page/FDA-Social-Media-Guidelines-Irresponsible/

ArticleStandard/Article/detail/757971>

[3] Sunstein, Cass. ?Television and the Public Interest.?California Law Review?88.2 (2000): 499. Print.

Source: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/polis/2013/01/28/why-social-media-is-good-for-medicine-an-why-pharmaceutical-companies-should-engage-online-new-research-event-thursday/

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'Tough but fair' immigration reform plan

Diana Saravia, 10, participates in a rally for immigration reform. (Mark Wilson/Getty??A new immigration reform proposal crafted by a bipartisan group of senators would allow for a gradual path to legalization for most of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants currently living in the country. The senators will announce more details of the plan?which they describe as "tough but fair"?on Monday afternoon in a press conference. (You can watch a live stream of the press conference here at 2:30 p.m. ET.)

The senators' path to citizenship for illegal immigrants is less direct and could take longer than the one proposed by President Barack Obama in his immigration reform blueprint. The president will announce his push for immigration reform in more detail Tuesday in Las Vegas.

The senators' plan puts forward several hurdles before undocumented immigrants could obtain permanent residence visas, called green cards, which is the first step towards citizenship. First, immigrants would apply for temporary legal status by registering with the government, completing a background check and paying a fine. Before immigrants obtain green cards, "a commission comprised of governors, attorneys general, and community leaders living along the Southwest border" will recommend that the government has taken enough steps to beef up border security and has also implemented a system that tracks when temporary visitors have left the country. It's unclear how long that would take, especially since border state governors are divided on how secure the border is now and ideally should be in the future.

The plan also says that no undocumented immigrant would receive a green card until every legal immigrant who is currently waiting for a green card has already received it. Wait times for green cards can be as long as 20 years in extreme cases, depending on whether the applicant is being sponsored by an employer or a family member. Family-based immigration, especially when a U.S. citizen is attempting to sponsor his or her sibling, can have especially long wait times.

The blueprint says the senators want to eliminate these wait times and drastically increase legal, high-skilled immigration, so it's possible that the bill could expedite the process. If not, illegal immigrants seeking a green card could be waiting for years.

The plan also excludes the children of illegal immigrants, commonly referred to as "Dreamers," as well as agricultural workers from the long wait for a green card.

Obama's blueprint asks for a wait time of eight years before illegal immigrants could get green cards, during which time they could live and work legally in the country. After five years with a green card, immigrants could apply to become citizens.

Immigration advocates, who generally favor a fast path to citizenship for the country's illegal immigrants, mostly praised the senators for adding to the "momentum" of reform, but did not comment on the specifics of the plan.

"Creating a 21st century immigration process won't be easy, but the framework the senators are proposing is a powerful and practical start to the legislative process, and it will make the peaks and valleys ahead much easier to traverse," said Ali Noorani, executive director of the the National Immigration Forum, in a statement.

But Chris Rickerd, policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, said his organization has "concerns" that the lengthy time frame and fine might discourage people from applying to legalize. Rickerd also noted that some people might be excluded from legalization because they were prosecuted for immigration-related crimes in their states. For example in Arizona, illegal immigrants can be charged with "self smuggling," which is a felony that does not exist in other states.

Groups that favor less immigration, meanwhile, have blasted the plan as "amnesty."

"Like previous amnesty proposals, this most recent iteration creates a 'path to citizenship' for nearly all illegal aliens and offers empty promises of enforcement without providing any concrete details," said the Federation of American Immigration Reform in a statement.

The eight senators who hammered out the deal are Republicans John McCain, Marco Rubio, Jeff Flake and Lindsey Graham, and Democrats Chuck Schumer, Michael Bennet, Dick Durbin and Robert Menendez.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/senators-tough-fair-immigration-blueprint-immigrants-wait-citizenship-173450017--politics.html

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